We at Triple Agent Digital Media can help your business make the right choice when it comes to your website. We also help you clear up the confusion about digital marketing, which is key to fully understanding and forecasting how exactly an expert internet marketing campaign is going to bring more leads into your sales cycle. In today’s article, we’re going to cover one very important concept: online marketing terminology. Torontonians like ourselves understand this just as well as the service-people out west at Internet Marketing.
The Most Misunderstood Concepts In Digital Marketing
You see, some terms in digital marketing can be at first difficult to comprehend. Some may have many definitions, while others may be the victims of prolonged misuse. We are in a day and age where digital marketing has proven to be as important as conventional marketing, even more in some cases. There are thousands of digital marketing agencies and millions of digital marketers out there who strive to optimize their campaigns day in and day out to reach the maximum number of people while staying within the budget defined by their clients.
Digital marketing is an imperfect science that needs continuous A-B testing to achieve optimized results. While it may look easy, one really has to take a deep dive in order to yield favourable results, making sure that the money being put in by the clients is utilized effectively.
The Difference Between SEO and SEM
SEO and SEM are different, because technically SEO is a part of SEM. SEM stands for Search Engine Marketing, which literally means marketing on a search engine.
Search engines have two kinds of listings – organic and paid.
- Organic Search Engine Listings: The organic rankings are the “free” rankings achieved by a good SEO campaign.
- Paid Search Engine Listings: Paid ranking is achieved by a good paid search advertising campaign.
Search Engine Optimization or SEO is that part of SEM that helps you rank organically.
This is a common mistake or confusion for online advertising rookies. Just because they use a single tool (Google AdWords/Google Ads for example) to achieve multiple different types of advertising, does not mean that they are all SEM. SEM is limited to advertising on search engines and has two components as stated above, and Google also has tools to run paid ads outside the search engine, which is where further confusion arises.
Google Ads is one example of a paid search ad campaign, which is one of the components of SEM. On the other hand, display ads and remarketing ads (i.e. Google AdSense and Google Ads Remarketing) are displayed on the display network partners of the online advertising service provider; they may not necessarily be displayed on search engines.
Overall, the terms “SEO”, “SEM”, “paid ads” and “display ads” are just some of the many things that may confuse someone when they are talking about digital marketing. While they seem small, it is important to know what they really are.
Learn More
Watch this video for a brief explanation and summary of the difference between SEO and SEM. This is the first in our brand new 1-Minute Tips series! Stay tuned for a great deal more value. Be sure to like and share!
